The University of Central Florida was ranked in the top tier for the first time ever in the U.S. News & World Report “America’s Best Colleges” list.
In the past UCF has ranked in the third or fourth tiers, but this year the Knights made it to the top with a rank of 179. That beats out Tampa’s University of South Florida’s ranking of 183, according to USnews.com.
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The University of Florida still beats out all of Florida’s public state universities with its ranking of 53. UF fell behind the private University of Miami, which is ranked at 47 — an improvement from its rank of 50 last year. UF had held the rank of 47 last year.
Florida State University in Tallahassee came in ahead of UCF and USF with its ranking of 104. Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton was not numerically ranked.
In the past, the top tier rankings stopped at about 100. The magazine expanded the rankings this year to include the top 200 schools in the top tier. Schools ranking above 200 are lumped into an unranked, second tier category. There is no longer a third or fourth tier.
Why the change?
“In response to a strong interest from readers in knowing precisely where all schools on their list stand, we’ve opted to display the rank of the top 75 percent of schools in each category, up from 50 percent,” according to the U.S. News and World Report website. “This top ranked group will be called the First Tier. The schools in the bottom 25 percent of each group are listed alphabetically as the Second Tier; which was previously called the 4th Tier.”
UCF also earned other honors by the magazine.
The school ranked seventh in the “Top Up-and-Coming Schools” list, which recognizes universities for success and innovation in academics, faculty, student life, campus and facilities, according to UCF. No other Florida university made this top 10 list.
According to a UCF News and Information article, the school’s fall 2009 freshman class averaged a 1225 on the SAT and included 55 National Merit Scholars. The university expects similar numbers in fall 2010.
Earlier this year, the magazine ranked five UCF graduate programs among the nation’s best in their fields. UCF’s engineering programs led the way and ranked #2 in Florida. Engineering, Education, Speech-Language Pathology, Public Administration and Computer Science all made the top 100, according to the UCF article.
